The legendary tale of football icon Ferenc Puskás’ journey in Australia with South Melbourne Hellas took centre stage at the Greek Film Festival (GFF), leaving a huge impression on audiences in Sydney and Melbourne.
The documentary titled “Ange and the Boss: Puskas in Australia” unpacked the period in time when Hellas had one of the greatest footballers of all time as its manager, a story that thrilled the attendees of its GFF screenings.
Tony Wilson, one of the three directors of the film alongside Cam Fink and Rob Heath, expressed his sincere delight in how the GFF audiences connected with the documentary.
“The reaction has just been enormous,” Wilson told Neos Kosmos.
“Whenever you make a film, you are always nervous as to whether it is going to connect with people. As non-Greeks we especially wanted that community to love it because I think it is almost a real gift to that group.”
The director explained that the reaction in the Sydney screening greatly enthused them about the success of their project.
“When we were in Sydney, just to hear the laughter (of which there was a lot), we could feel the excitement and there was emotion as well,” he said.
“We came out of the cinema and I said ‘wow, this film has worked’ and we had not even shown it to the Melbourne Greeks yet.”
The subsequent screening in Melbourne last Sunday at the Astor Theatre amassed a tremendous crowd to create an atmosphere at the end that Wilson compared to that of a proper football match.
“I felt like my heart was beating really hard and all these years of work (seven years since we started and nearly ten years since the original idea), it just felt like it was all worthwhile,” he said.
“I hope this is not just a film for Greeks but it has to be a film for Greeks. They have to like it or we are in big trouble.”

The success in Melbourne has led to a second screening for this coming Saturday, 4pm, at Palace Cinemas in Balwyn.
The overwhelmingly positive response served as validation for Wilson and his fellow directors, who had first conceived of the project way back in 2015.
Wilson explained that the inspiration for the documentary came after a lunch he had with football historians Paul Mavridis and Ian Syson, wherein Mavridis told him the story of Puskás in Australia.
“I had not known about it at the time and I thought to myself ‘that is just incredible. How does a guy that huge in terms of fame and achievements make it to Melbourne, live in the suburbs, and me as a sports lover not know?'” Wilson said.
He rationalised that as an Anglo living in an AFL-obsessed city, the magnitude of Puskás being in Melbourne was not articulated as effectively as it should have been, which is why he felt it important to tell the story for other sports lovers who may have also missed it.
It was then that he approached his two colleagues (with whom he had already made a previous AFL-themed film called ‘The Galahs’) about making the documentary, an idea both of them were very receptive to.
Wilson stated that they began making enquiries for interviews and it was two years later in 2017 when they began their first set of interviews with people like George Vassilopoulos and Paul Trimboli.

The director revealed that the film really took off when Ange Postecoglou agreed to take part, Hellas’ main captain during the Puskás years.
“The interview with Ange Postecoglou took place just two days after he resigned as Socceroos boss,” Wilson said.
“I actually thought he was going to cancel, we were just little filmmakers and he had had a pretty traumatic (difficult) week. I always think it is a sign of the man, one of the reasons I love him, that Ange did not cancel and he gave us two hours.”
Wilson expressed that the interview with Postecoglou is “one of the main reasons we have a film to show”.
The documentary features a series of interviews, including many former South Melbourne players, with them all collectively recounting the numerous stories about Puskás.
These included their recollections of the skill he demonstrated with a football even then when he was in his 60s, his pre-match addresses, routines at training, his language difficulties etc.
It is worth noting that Postecoglou became an important translator as the Hungarian icon picked up some Greek after coaching stints with Panathinaikos (1970-1974) and AEK (1978-1979).
“I think that as these stories get told, it really is like sitting in a sportsman’s night because these are the stories that these players have told to each other for 30 years,” Wilson said.
“It is a miracle in a sporting sense that a guy like this would turn up and you can feel in the way the players tell these stories that they are stories that have stayed with them and are very much a favourite part of their lives.”

Wilson stated that one of the biggest surprises he found upon researching the story was discovering that Puskás had run clinics and had even coached an U15s team, which he thought was “just bonkers”.
“Before he went to South Melbourne Hellas, he actually was really enjoying time in Australia, getting in among the Hungarian community, doing his clinics and then coaching an underage team. I think that is the most extraordinary thing,” the director said.
Wilson highlighted his belief that Puskás is probably the biggest football personality to have left a legacy in Australia, with Postecoglou stressing in the film how Puskás’ attacking mentality challenged the English influence in the game down under during the 80s and 90s.
Wilson added that Postecoglou learned a lot from Puskás, though the most important lessons he took were related to the way he made a club tick.
“Ange thinks he learned man management from Puskas and what a happy dressing room looked like. That, I believe, is something we have seen in Ange’s success,” he said.
“You can see a combination of free-flowing, attacking football and happy players. You might argue that the happiness, which comes across in the film, is the lesson of Puskas.”
Wilson reinforced his belief that Puskás is probably the “one true great”, the person in the Pelé and Maradona bracket, that Australia can boast about in being part of its football history.
“He is the most decorated person to have ever come to Australia so even a small film like this kind of puts us on the map as we tell the story of him deciding to come and grace us with his presence.”